Houlihan Lokey sees mid-cap opportunity in ECM advisory
Debt restructuring and advisory specialist Houlihan Lokey is launching a European equity capital markets (ECM) advisory practice under William Marshall, an ECM banker who has joined from the equity advisory team at Rothschild and who previously worked in equity syndicate...
Visa pays $5.3 billion to share in fintech growth
Visa proposes to pay $5.3 billion for Plaid, a company established only in 2013 that enables consumers to securely connect their accounts at incumbent banks to fintech apps – such as Venmo, TransferWise, Betterment, Acorns and many others – through...
ABN Amro CEO-elect Robert Swaak faces AML, M&A test
ABN Amro names Robert Swaak as CEO Robert Swaak is largely unknown, even in the relatively close-knit banking community of the Netherlands, but after a career at the Dutch branch of PwC, he is assuming one of the most influential...
Asian exchanges: Taking stock
This is the question facing regulators across Asia’s emerging markets. Some of them have recently established exchanges. Others are wondering how to reinvigorate decades-old, lacklustre institutions. No one finds the task easy. Cambodia and Kazakhstan, in their own ways, face...
Mindspace aims to prove that India’s Reits market is no one-hit wonder
Mindspace provides real estate in high-end business parks such as Juinagar, in the Mumbai region Mindspace Business Parks, a real-estate investment trust backed by US private equity firm and Indian property developer K Raheja, aims to complete its IPO by...
Exclusive: Credit Suisse hires CMB’s Wang Jing in proof of China private banking ambitions
Credit Suisse has hired Wang Jing as its head of mainland China private banking (PB) operations, as it accelerates plans to become the leading foreign provider of high-end wealth management services to customers in Asia’s largest economy. Previously head of...
What’s wrong with ESG ratings?
According to Jay Clayton, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, they are “over-inclusive and imprecise.” Researchers at MIT Sloan characterized their effect as “aggregate confusion.” And on a recent Euromoney podcast, Peter Bakker of the World Business Council...
SDGs: Conscious coupling of the public and private sectors
When the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) for 2030 were launched in 2015, the call was for private capital to step up where public sector budgets could not – five years on, the heads of financial institutions have now...
Responsible finance: Trump’s Kodak moment
“They want no oil and gas,” US president Trump said of the Democrats on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, sandwiched between: “They want no guns”, and “They want no God”. On closing night he elaborated: “[Democratic nominee...
Country risk: A Conservative majority may not be the golden ticket for UK investors
The Confederation of British Industry is concerned about the burden of the UK’s financial obligations to the EU, despite PM Boris Johnson’s reassurances A majority for the incumbent Conservative Party, however small, would reinvigorate the Brexit process. Every one of...